T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA St. Clairsville Recreation Director Eric Gay announces phase two of the artificial turf project at the Junior Sports Complex.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — St. Clairsville Parks and Recreations Department received a $210,767.50 grant to complete the second phase of its artificial turf project at the Junior Sports Complex.

Recreation Director Eric Gay made the announcement at the St. Clairsville City Council meeting on Monday evening. The federal Land and Water Conservation grant was made possible through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the National Parks Service and is a 50/50 grant.

In 2023, the Parks and Recreations Department applied for a grant that ended up being $994,000 in full but was broken into two phases.

The first phase of work began last October and brought artificial turf to the upper two fields with lights at the Jr. Sports Complex at the park. The first phase of the grant was for $289,232.50.

In total the department received $500,000 of the $1 million project.

Due to the 50/50 grant being broken up into two phases, the city was able to pay a $250,000 match in 2024 and a $250,000 match in 2025.

“This is phase two of the project that we’re going to start in the middle of July, which will be three additional fields. So that’ll give us five turf in fields out of the six fields that we have up there,” Gay said.

“We’re not under the timeline that we were for the first phase of this project, where we ran into the bad winter months. We’re going to start at the bottom and work our way up. I spoke with the contractor today, and we discussed some timelines and some things, and we’re really comfortable and really confident that we’ll be able to get these done a lot easier than the first one just because of the weather, not for lack of anybody’s work or anything like that. But the difference was it was a bad winter, so starting in the summer is going to be a big difference for us this time around.”

Gay added that once Phase 2 of the project is completed with only one field, the Pixie Field will be the only field left without artificial turf.

“It”s the only field that doesn’t have its own fence, so all of the fenced in fields will have artificial turf. I’ve answered this question a lot because a lot of people were like, ‘Well, my kid’s not going to be able to play on that field this year.’ I do understand that, but they may not be able to play on it when they’re 6 and 7 years old, but because of the decisions we’ve made, they’ll have fields to play on when they’re 8 through 18,” he said.

“We wanted to stay under our budget, which we did. This gives us the most fields that the kids can play on for the duration, not just for maybe a year or two. I always say that little kids can play on big fields, but big kids can’t play on little fields.”

Gay added that once completed, the fields will be much easier for him and his crew to maintain and manage.

Following Gay’s announcement, Service Director Scott Harvey made an announcement of his own. He said the street department recently completed a culvert project on Thompson Avenue.

“They put a 48-inch culvert in across from where there was a sinkhole. The old culvert had separated and was creating a big sinkhole inside of the road. So that’s done. We’ll have to repair that section of road because it’s a pretty big section that they took out,” Harvey said.

He added that although the project is complete, the road will need to be repatched due to the large trucks frequently having to drive on it.